The Launching of Roger Brook

living as best you may.'

'I come of a Jacobite family on my mother's side,' Roger admitted. 'She was a Lady Marie McElfic before her marriage, and my grand­father was the Earl of Kildonan.'

'Why; how small the world is!' exclaimed de Perigord, 'I know him. But no; it must be your uncle with whom I am acquainted.'

Roger nodded.' 'Twould be my uncle Colin. You have the advantage of me there, though, for my mother quarrelled with her family on her marriage and I have never met any of them. He would be about fifty now, and 'tis said that I take after him.'

'You do. Now I look at you again I can see the resemblance. Lord Kildonan was in Paris last autumn and again this spring. He broke his journey here for several weeks both going to and coming from Rome, where he spent the winter in attendance on the old gentleman whom you no doubt regard as your lawful Sovereign.'

Roger was saved from having to reply to this awkward question by the Abbe standing up, and going smoothly on. 'But I am forgetting that you are still an invalid. I must not tire you by gossiping over­much. We'll talk again to-morrow. In the meantime, good night and fair dreams to you, Monsieur le Chevalier de Breuc.'

For a moment Roger was nonplussed, but he recovered in time to say good night before his host limped gracefully from the room; then he gave himself up to thinking over this strange interview. It had not occurred to him before that in France, as the grandson of an Earl, he was fully entitled both to style himself 'Chevalier' and place the 'de' of the nobility before his name if he wished. He wondered what effect that might have on his affair with Athenais. It Was the magic pass which would enable him to cross the barrier that lay between them but, even so, it would not raise him to her status. Her father would never allow her to marry a landless Chevalier; moreover, she was still in distant Brittany and he had yet to make his peace with her.

Next day the doctor came to remove his bandages. The bullet had only grazed his scalp and a strip of plaster covering the furrow it had made was now all that was necessary. An inch-wide swathe of his hair had been cut away to cleanse the wound, but the Abba's barber came in the afternoon to redress his hair in a new fashion which almost concealed the plaster.

In the evening de Perigord paid him another visit and, having thought the matter over during the day, Roger confided to him the major events which had led to his becoming the Marquis de Rochambeau's secretary. He said nothing of Athenais and allowed the Abbe to continue in his belief that Jacobite sympathies were one of his principal reasons for coming to France. To this end he laid his quarrel with his father to that account.

It was not that he did not trust the Abbe but he feared that the whole truth might place him in an awkward position. During the past forty years innumerable British subjects of Jacobite sympathies had taken service under the French flag and many of them had held positions of trust in the wars against their own country. So to pose as a Jacobite secured him from any possibility that the Abbe might feel it his duty to inform the Marquis that he had been deceived into employing as his secretary an Englishman who was loyal to King George III. Roger also took the opportunity to say that as long as he had to earn his living as a servant he would greatly prefer that his true lineage should not be made public; and de Perigord readily agreed to the wisdom of this.

When Roger had done the Abbe said thoughtfully: 'Would that I had had the courage to do as you did, and break with my family rather than allow them to force me into the Church; but in view of my crippled foot it seemed that no other course was open to me.'

'Were you born a cripple?' Roger asked.

'Nay. I came by my lameness through an accident. As a babe I was put out to nurse with poor folk who had not the time to look after me properly, and while still quite young had a fall. The injury was neglected and has cost me dear. As the eldest surviving son of my father, the Count de Talleyrand-Perigord, I was his heir; but when it was found that on account of my lameness I should never be able to bear arms, he secured the King's permission to disinherit me in favour of my younger brother.'

'That was hard indeed, and you must have had a most unhappy childhood.'

'No worse than falls to the lot of most children of the French nobility. My parents remained almost strangers to me and I never passed a night under their roof; but between the ages of five and eight I spent three Wonderful years with my great-grandmo ther, the Princess de Chalais, at her chateau near Bordeaux. She and I loved each other fondly, and to live there with her was an education in itself. Her friends were all old people, relics of a past age, but they had known the real glory of the Court of Louis XIV, where integrity and intellect were rated greater virtues than the capacity to tell a dirty story or cheat skilfully at cards. Their manners were impeccable, and they still maintained the old tradition of being a father to their peasants instead of ruining them by a hundred petty taxes to provide for their own extravagance. It almost broke my heart when I was brought back to Paris and put to study in the College d'Harcourt.' 'Was it very dreary there?'

'Incredibly so; but the Seminary of Saint Sulpice, where I later spent seven years, was even worse. Before I went there, in an endeavour to reconcile me to entering the Church, my parents sent me to live for a year with my uncle at Hautefontaine, the Court of the Archbishop of Rheims. He was then Coadjutor there and is now Archbishop himself. 'Twas thought that a sight of the pomp, luxury and licence in which these great prelates live would tempt me to follow in their steps with some eagerness, yet even that had no permanent effect on my distaste for the Church as a career. But my latter years at Saint Sulpice were made bearable by a truly charming love affair. When I was seventeen I met a young and lovely actress, named Dorothee Dorinville. She was no common trollop of the stage but loathed its sordidness and was as lonely as myself. She became my mistress, and at our stolen meetings I could forget the endless, nit-picking discourses on theology which for hours each day I was compelled either to listen to or compose. Then at the age of twenty-five I was ordained. At last I had my freedom and not an hour of it have I wasted since. 'Tis a fine life even if we do all live on the edge of a precipice.'

Roger smiled at this charming cynic. 'I wonder, though,' he said after a moment, 'that with your high connections you have not yet received greater preferment.'

The Abbd took a pinch of snuff, and returned the smile. 'Well may you do so, mon ami. I wake each morning with amazement on that score myself. So far I have been given but one miserable Abbey, that of Saint Denis in the diocese of Rheims, and been made Vicar-General of the Archbishopric. 'Tis true that I am also Agent du Charge for the Church in the province of Tours, but that brings me little; and I am ever being put to the most shameless shifts to make two ends meet. I should have been given a Bishopric long since, and a rich one at that, but I am past caring overmuch any longer. 'Great changes are coming to France and in them will lie my real opportunity.'

'You think then that the present regime will not last much longer?'

'It cannot, as you would know if you talked with many of my friends; and I do not refer to those who still hide their heads like ostriches in the gaieties of the Court, but men of affairs who are in a position to appreciate the true state and temper of the nation. I am, alas, so poor that I have perforce to eat my dinners at other people's tables, but I give breakfast to a dozen or so of my friends here every morning. At any time you care to take a cup of chocolate with us you will be most welcome. I mean that; and please do not refrain from coming through any fear that you will be cold-shouldered because I may not introduce you by your true rank. The men who meet here are mostly nobles, it is true, but they have the sense to realise that the time is coming when a coat of arms will not be worth a button, and they are interested only in men as men, for what they think and have to say.'

'I will certainly avail myself of your kind invitation,' Roger replied. 'M. le Marquis rarely requires any attendance in the mornings and I can always catch up with my routine work at other hours. But now that I am well enough I feel that I ought to return to the Hotel de Rochambeau, as with d'Haury's death and my absence there must be a mighty accumulation of matters requiring attention.'

'My carriage shall take you back to-morrow morning,' said de Perigord. So Roger, having parted from his new friend with many expressions of good will on both sides, returned to his duties on the third day after their unforeseen interruption.

That afternoon he saw his master in an entirely new, and far from pleasant, light. Previously the Marquis had always appeared to him cold, haughty and dispassionate, but just and not unkind. Now, on his arrival from Versailles, he displayed a most evil temper. Its cause was the confusion into which his affairs had been thrown by suddenly being deprived of both his secretaries. He had at once been informed of the reason for this by de Perigord; but, instead of showing the least distress at the unfortunate d'Heury's death and Roger's injury, his mind was entirely taken up with the comparatively slight inconvenience that their absence had caused himself.

For five minutes he ranted at Roger, abusing him for looking no less well than usual, and asserting that clearly he had been fit enough to return to work the day before, instead of idling out at Passy. Then be thrust a